¡Hola, Maya y Miguel!

You don't dress up as a mascot for the money; you do it for the stories—even though the pay probably tops what you make actually using your liberal arts degree. Mascots induce smiles, but they also induce fear. For every child that wants to hug you, there is one who bawls at the sight of you. And you'll soon discover that you don't only freak out select toddlers; you creep out some high school kids and even the occasional full-grown adult. Watch them step back to gawk at you or eye you suspiciously. No, they don't want you to throw their arms around them, thank you very much. You are, after all, a cartoon character brought to life and one whose facial expression never changes. You are also mute and guilty of an awkward gait. Your huge head teeters to and fro, the front of it locked in a grin, as you shuffle across the convention center floor or tower over fans on the playing field. Your kind is rare in this world.Last weekend, I spent ten hours playing Miguel from the PBS children's show, Maya & Miguel. Even though I am a woman, I had to play Miguel because I was too tall for Maya's costume. Besides, nobody would be able to tell, right? Well, that would've been the case had my costume included the built-in body armor typical of mascot suits. Yet, perhaps because my character was not a chubby, furry animals, my costume lacked said body armor. Other than my awkward head and plush shoes, you never would have guessed my costume was meant for a mascot. Instead, it looked like an outfit from The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air: bright, baggy T-shirt and denim carpenter pants. I had flesh-colored opera gloves for hands. Certainly, a skinny 25-year-old man was meant to wear this costume.

I have a woman's figure. Oversized clothes do not hide this fact. I still look like a female human being. But I put on the costume, anyway, and asked my fellow mascots if I could pass as Miguel. They laughed.“I hate to say this about the girl last weekend,” one man chuckled, “But she could do it.” I tried really hard not to punch him. Somehow I succeeded. Perhaps because he was dressed as Puff the Magic Dragon.“It's just going to look like Miguel was questioning his gender identity today,” said a woman. In case you ever wondered, these are the kinds of conversations that go on behind the scenes in the mascot changing tent at trade shows and expos.Given the combination of body shapes and sizes in our talent pool and the costumes available that morning, my casting agency had no choice: I would play Miguel.As you may expect, mascots costumes heat up quickly. That is why many companies do not allow a person to wear a mascot costume for more than 20 or 30 minutes at a time. Any longer than that and Chuck E. Cheese might just topple over from exhaustion. The visibility isn't great, either. Imagine the most dangerous Halloween mask you wore as a kid and cut that mask's visibility in half. Some mascot heads allow for better sight than others, but even in the best cases, an escort is a must. More often than not, the escort is a sweet college student or a semi-retired grandma hoping. Mine was a jaded thirty-something who couldn't wait to pack up, go home and wait for her check to come in the mail. In direct contrast to all of the mascots, she never smiled, no matter how cute the four-year-old in front of her was. This includes the ones in snowsuits and bunny rabbit hats.Dizzy and nearly blind, even in my costume I could tell that parents were giggling as they elbowed each other and pointed at me. My escort ignored them and corralled the children for photo ops. Yes, you are so clever because you noticed that Miguel has breasts and hips, I wanted to say to the adults.Maybe Miguel is, anatomically speaking, a woman. What would you say to that? Would you prohibit your kids from watching the damn cartoon? But I was there to make little kids happy, not lecture adults about gender and sexuality. Interestingly enough, most of the children could not tell that Miguel was played by a woman. And if they could, they didn't say a thing about it. Most of them were thrilled to see one of their favorite PBS characters. Sure, some kids cried, but they would've cried even if I were playing Big Bird or Mickey Mouse. Some of the older kids gave me strange looks and refused to pose with me, but I suspect that had more to do with them wanting to seem “cool” than them being afraid of my mixed-up gender identity. Unsurprisingly, a couple of creepy dudes—ones walking by themselves, no children in tow—took my picture and winked at me. Seriously?At the beginning of the day, I had tried to squelch my feminine shape by slouching. Unfortunately, you must maintain good posture in order for a mascot head to sit correctly on your own. When I began to realize that the kids didn't care that Miguel had a woman's body, I became a lot less self-conscious. I thought to Mulan and Shakespeare in Love. This wasn't exactly a unique situation in history. At the end of the day, I had been responsible for dozens of children's excitement and just as many family photos. In a decade, some of those children might see those family photos differently.